A “10 Things” List is a popular structure for online content and print magazine articles. But why 10? The Arabic number system we use is based on units of 10. We have 10 fingers. These are the answers I’ve most often gotten in response to this question. But when we organize content, is there a better structure to use?
Many experts in how the brain and language work have stated over the last many decades that George Miller’s research from 50 years ago that was published as “The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” offers a handy way to organize information that maps onto how our brain works. Over the decades there have been many misapplications, over-extensions, and misinterpretations of Miller’s basic findings that there are fairly well defined limits on the number of items we can manipulate while in short term memory. Miller found 5 to 9 items are the standard limits for list item recall. There are other constraints that other researchers have found. This fact doesn’t invalidate Miller’s findings. Neural systems are among the most complex systems in our world. There can be more more than one generalized rule teased from a complex system.
So far there isn’t one that involves the number 10. So convention appears to be the only real determining factor for using the number 10 in top ten lists, ten worst lists, ten things to know about articles, ten new items or products lists. So should you produce or procure ten-based lists for your content needs? Sure. Why not. But you will join a gah-zillion other ten-based lists floating around out there.
Why not make your lists stand out a bit and possibly make them more memorable by finding coherent groupings of your content subject and presenting them as linked sets that can be easily remembered? I can’t think of a single reason not to go with numbers smaller than 10.
My own preference is to combine the memory magic of the number seven plus or minus two with another magic numeric principle hinged on the number four as discussed by researcher Nelson Cowan in his work. The “magic” associated with four of anything is that we can know (rapid enumeration of small numbers of objects) the number of a group of objects instantly if we see a group of four or less things. More than four requires counting.
You don’t want your reader to have to count, you want them to be able to remember your salient points, and you want them to be able to recall examples of each point you make too, if at all possible. So how do you do it? Well logical grouping of the points you make, and keeping those points to as few as possible, to the fewest that are truly central to your topic is the best way. Delivering a good product that hangs together is always better than padding your list to get to 10 components.
Some techniques you might employ to manage weighty lists containing more than 7 – 9 items would be to use sub-groupings. For example if you had a listing of 100 color names you could organize them by their closest primary color, by the ROY G. BIV rainbow schema (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,) by pastels and brights, by how well they render online (web safe colors,) or even by order they are added to languages (if the language names only two colors the two words mean wet/dark and dry/light, if it has three then red is added, and so on.) Clever sub-groupings will help the reader remember groups of details. Experiment and keep track of returning visitors to articles that have incorporated this technique. A successful pairing with bring return visitors and referrals from those return visitors.
Happy organizing!
Nablopomo No Mo'
I actually wrote my answer to today’s writing prompt for the last day of the November Nablopomo on BlogHer, “What did you learn from doing Nablopomo?” as yesterday’s blog post. I am always so ahead of the game. It was called, “Posting 30 Times This Month – Nearly There, Nearly Insane.” I did forget to mention one thing in yesterday’s post – that in the absolutely brutal past month, my daughter also was in a fender bender in my car. But things are starting to shape up today. I figured out a plan of attack for all the things that have to be done in the next few days (Action Lists!) in order to assure a smooth “next month” that starts tomorrow. Yikes! And the other driver’s insurance company is going to pick up our repairs. And I crossed off several items on my “find the paperwork” and “schedule stuff” lists. Feels good to be moving forward and getting a few things done!
Somehow, during the course of the day, today, I decided to do Nablopomo again in December. I’m such a freaking masochist! But I’m going to have my I’m Done Nesting blog be the participating blog in December. The theme for the month is “Gift” and you can read about the theme or find out how to participate on BlogHer, hint: you can sign up through the 5th.
Okay, now I will respond to today’s prompt. What did I learn from doing Nablopomo this month? Well, first I was really hoping to win one of the prizes, but I guess that is a no go. * Sad Face* I learned that having something to focus on, such as a blog post done at the end of the day, actually can reduce stress. Next month I plan to learn that posting everyday can be fun and need not mean writing a research article every day. My brilliant and beautiful daughter will graduate from college this month, and my wonderful and witty step-daughter and her family (hubby and twin one year old daughters) will be here for much of the month, friends from a nearby state will pop in for a few days… and, well, basically there should be plenty of opportunity for photo-blogging, cute baby story posting, and for recipe evaluation. With any luck at all it will not be as difficult to post every day on a personal blog as on my business blog that has a professional nature and for which I have more stringent standards.
Posting 30 Times This Month – Nearly There, Nearly Insane
When I began writing a blog post every day as a part of Nablopomo, National Blog Posting Month, to join the celebration of Nablopomo officially becoming a part of BlogHer I knew it would be tough, but I had no idea how much extra stress I would be under. Why do we women always think we can do more than is humanly possible?
I will have accomplished something spectacular by following through with 30 posts in 30 days. I have also worked on a lot of other events, projects, and “things,” and it isn’t over yet. I have about two weeks of sheer insanity left and then the simple hectic rush of the Holidays will begin, and “No, this extra craziness I’m talking about isn’t part of the Holiday hustle and bustle.”
A Partial Menu of Stuff on My Plate
- My husband is on sabbatical and spending lots of time at home working on grants and other writing projects – mainly smack dab in the middle of our family space: with the laptop on the couch or at the kitchen table – now that he is back from his travels to several East Coast Universities during the first half of the the semester.
- I’ve been working on rearranging some of our financial concerns including a home refinance that rolls in a second mortgage that we had to take out when I moved across the country to take care of my mother as she was dying at the same time my daughter was graduating from High School and starting college. (Things do happen in clumps don’t they?) The appraisal required a tidy enough house to see the floors and walls that had been hidden by boxes of my daughter’s accumulated stuff from college that needs “going through” before we can pitch or sell the contents.
- My daughter moved back in with us this fall during her last semester of college. The car she had been using decided to die, so we also shared a car this semester. She also has a female 110 lb. Dogue de Bordeaux living here with her as well as our Neo Mastiff, a 160 lb. male, and our 60 lb. hyperactive rescue mixed breed. Yes, there is dog drool everywhere in our house, including the ceilings and high enough on walls that it takes a step ladder to get to them to wipe them down. (Two mastiffs ago I repainted the entire interior of our house with semi-gloss paint. We also have two cats. (Do I even need to say that the dogs and cats do not get along?) There is also my daughter’s aquatic turtle with his very large aquarium. Our male dog is intact. Her female dog was in heat all November.
- My daughter will graduate from university in mid-year ceremonies mid-December. We are trying to arrange all the graduation basics, plus a wonderful reception afterwards. Relatives are coming from the East Coast. My daughter is also applying to graduate schools with January deadlines on all paperwork, retaking her GREs, and getting ready to move to Minneapolis in early January.
- Did I mention we helping her buy a car this week?
- Oh, and I don’t think I mentioned that the east coasters who will be arriving are my step-daughter, her one-year-old twin daughters, and her husband who lost a leg in a boating accident this past summer? No shit sherlock, it has been an absolutely incredible year.
- This fall I’m also supposed to be finishing up my memoir that deals with a lot of the medical child abuse I experienced as a child and how I have continued to heal to a remarkable degree throughout my life. (No stress there! – Yes, I’m seeing my therapist while remembering and writing.)
- I’ve been neglecting my friends, and amassing huge vats of guilt that I’m lugging around like Scrooge’s night visitor, one who lost her home in foreclosure and is now Occupying Tucson and my childhood best friend whose husband just had bypass surgery, a stroke, and a very bad reaction to morphine?
- Step-daughter’s birthday is two days before Christmas, daughter’s birthday is just after the New Year.
- My dear husband and daughter told me tonight, as I melted into a simpering mass of babbling mush on the floor, that they want to have a garage sale the weekend between finals and graduation.
Blogging every day may have kept me sane this month. Now I just have to make sure that all the posts that I wrote and posted here or on my other blogs or on BlogHer show up here on this site as blog posts too and are labelled Nablopomo. And there are some that I posted here that I wanted to cross post on my other sites, but somehow I didn’t get them cross-posted.
Thank Heavens that next year is coming soon. I can’t wait!
More of Dorothea Lange's Images & Subjects
Continuing yesterday’s topic of parallels between the Great Depression and the current Recession, the fragility of families and children in the 99%, both then and now, is troubling. Lange’s photos personalized the migrants who took to the roads looking for labor in the fields of the west after their jobs were either lost to the mechanization of farming or the environmental degradation when whole geographic areas were pushed into ruin with the economic collapse of the late 20s due to unsustainable banking and investment practices.
Lange personalized the purportedly “shiftless” migrants changing the perception of the population about the people who had lost everything. Do the Occupy folks need a similar champion to document and distribute real information behind the families who have representatives occupying the various cities across the U.S. and the world.
Another of Lange’s photos suggests that the fat cats in New York stayed pretty fat during the lean years of the Depression.
Does this site serve the same purpose today as documentary photography did back then?
Photo Similarities Between the Times of the Great Depression & Great Recession
Spent some time today looking at National Archive photos and Wikimedia Commons pics and found these parallel pics.
Dorothea Lange’s photos of the Dust Bowl, Migrants in California, and the general sadness and despair caused by land abuse and economic abuse seem oddly contemporary.
Thanksgivng Hero
The Tucson community is once again abuzz with news of Gabby Giffords. This time it is good news. While you may not agree with Blue Dog support of everything military as Gabby has tended to do in her political career, she does provide inspiration and shows what determination can do if you have medical and family support to complete a supportive components of a healing triangle.
Today she and her husband Mark served Thanksgiving Dinner on base at Davis Monthan AFB here in Tucson today. Local news coverage of the surprise visit is available at KOLD‘s website. It is worth the watch.
A most important element of her recovery had not occurred to me until I read about what she and her husband Mark’s visit could mean to wounded service persons who are also healing as much as they can from the concussive brain injuries that are routine in this last wave of wars they’ve been fighting. I’m still hoping Gabby will become an active representative in the gun safety movement, but whether she does or not, she will be serving and inspiring one of her most vulnerable constituent populations and doing so from the informed perspective of a fellow brain injury survivor.
How she survived is beyond my level of understanding. That she survived is beyond my understanding. How she manages to do the painstaking rehabilitation work she does, let alone be able to find the strength to make constituent visits like this one to DMAFB is totally beyond my poor understanding.